Additive manufacturing (also commonly referred to as three-dimensional (3D) printing) may create physical objects, structures, etc., based upon a computer-controlled program which instructs the 3D printer how to deposit successive layers of extruded material which may then fuse together to form the printed article, device, component, object, structure, part, etc. Fused deposition modeling (FDM), also referred to herein as fused filament fabrication (FFF), is one such additive manufacturing process. In fused filament fabrication (FFF), a thermoplastic filament may be supplied from a coil of such filament to an extrusion nozzle. In many FFF machines, a worm-drive gear system engages and pushes the filament into and through the nozzle at a controlled rate. The nozzle may be heated to melt the filament with the melted filament then being deposited by an extrusion head as beads of material which may then rapidly harden after extrusion from the nozzle.
While depositing the melted filament, the nozzle may be moved in both horizontal and vertical directions by a numerically (e.g., computer) controlled mechanism. For example, the positioning of the nozzle may follow a build path controlled by a computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software program. The build path defines the pattern for how the melted filament is deposited from the extrusion head as “road(s)” of material to form a given layer. Accordingly, in FFF additive manufacturing, the article, device, component, object, structure, part, etc., to be produced is thus built from the bottom up, layer by layer.